Dual fuel is overrated and an unneeded expense. Especially with a separate wall oven. You'd do better to buy a Bluestar range top, or Bosch induction, and separate double ovens if you just cant deal with a gas oven. All professional bakeries use gas fired ovens, so don’t fall for the BS of electric being ”better”. It isn’t.

And the added expense and logistical difficulty of your 42” hood and make up air system need to be worked out NOW, in the appliance selection phase. Then the design phase can account for those expensive logistics issues.

Thank you! This is great feedback. We currently have an older Viking that we have had to replace the heating element on twice in the past 7 years. It is a very expensive fix. The repair person gave us the idea of dual feul so we don’t run into the same issue again. Our architect hasnt mentioned anything about a new air system. I’ll have to ask about this. Thanks!

@mainemama8 I love my dual fuel range, 2nd one in 14 years. If you are serious cake baker, then you know how sensitive they are to the fluctuation of the oven temperature. Many ranges drop/go too high in their cycle, which kills cakes. Gas ranges heat up quickly, but are not even. I'd go to a high end appliance store when they have cooking demos and see if they can work with you.

Thank you! Yes- I bake all the time, so i am drawn to the consistency of an electric oven. I do worry that roasting veggies in an electric oven won’t be the same as gas oven…

I’m putting a 36” dual fuel Five Star range in. Very limited electronics- not even an oven timer.

Thanks! I’m not familar with Five Star. I’ll check them out!

@mainemama8 I used to bake custom cakes, my new range had to be calibrated because the cakes would fall...turns out that the temp was off. I roast veggies in my electric range all the time...I actually switch between my Weber gas grill and my range :) I make all of my pizzas on a pizza stone inside the Weber...even when it snows (it's covered)! I've also made a Thanksgiving turkey in the Weber (wrapped in cheesecloth), and even in the Smokey Mountain! Be creative, and good luck!

Five Star has its fans (I’m one). Around here, the local appliance places do not carry it anymore. Five Star sells direct. I’m confident enough in the brand to buy direct, but I did call their suggested local repair shop to confirm that the ranges are still the workhorses they were the last time I bought one. (So I recommend doing the same before you buy if you go that route.)

I went through an appliance store for my remaining appliances. They will hold my appliances until I’m ready to have them installed. My range gets shipped direct to my home, and I get to coordinate with my installer. I had my installer review Five Star’s installation guidelines to be sure they can do it (not complicated!)

It is just one more thing to coordinate, so ymmv depending on your project.

Thank you!! it is so helpful to hear other people’s experiences!

We have a 30" BlueStar gas range that we paired with a 24" Miele CSO and Miele speed oven. We use the ovens interchangeably, based on which features we need at any given time.

I find the difference between fuel sources is negligible. I do need to make minor adjustments, but it barely even requires any thinking. The overall mix of appliances works really well and they complement each other perfectly. We frequently use all three ovens for the same meal.

I have never had the heating element die on me. That's a bit of an unusual part to fail. But the igniters do fail occasionally on gas ranges. OEM parts cost about $30-$40 on Amazon and take 15 min work with a screwdriver to replace. But if you call a technician, I'm sure it would cost hundreds. That always have huge mark up.

The nice thing about BlueStar is their use of lots of industry standard components. So, they tend to be really easy to service. Ours is now more than 10 years old and going strong

Thank you very much for this! Wow- 3 stoves! You are my hero! Yes- the technician said that the Vikings need new heating elements about every 3 years- and sadly, we have found that to be the case. It costs $800 every time. Shocking, right?? But when a new oven can cost $8,000, it becomes a dilemma. Hoping to avoid this with our next oven!

We have a 20+ year old Viking that came with the house. It's in the in-law unit. It works. But that's about it. Can't really say any other good things about the brand.

"I am a serious cook/baker and am looking for a high quality"

If this is true... You likely want a gas oven and electric oven w/ moisture control so an all gas range and an electric wall oven. These two ovens are quite different and each as advantages and disadvantages for different things. E.G., cakes do best in a good electric oven while most breads or other dough based baking does best in gas.

For an all gas range - Bluestar RNB is probably the ticket. I don't know of any that compare.

For electric wall ovens - We went with Miele (our 3rd). I can't remember what the deciding factors were. There may be another that works for your particular needs.

More: https://bamasotan.us/2020/12/the-kitchen/

Thank you so much! I am definitely going to consider this duo as an option. My husband really likes the Miele brand.

We are going through the same decision process right now and I have been going back and forth on whether to do a dual fuel or all gas since we are also getting a single electric oven. It seems to make sense to do both, and as a bonus you save a little on the range being all gas. As for brands we are considering Thermador, Wolf, Monogram, and possibly Bluestar. We priced out a package with Mongram and Thermador, which have some nice incentives if you buy a couple other appliances from them (essentially you get a free dishwasher, microwave, or a credit).

I wouldn't by just based on the package they are offering. Quite frequently, appliance manufacturers have one type of appliance that they are really good at, and the rest is only OK; or it is bought from a different manufacturer and has a new label slapped on.

Wolf and Bluestar both make great gas ranges. Get a Wolf, if you want to stay a little more mainstream and need more of a "polished" product (and absolutely do not get their electric ovens!). Get a Bluestar, if you want raw performance and uncompromising ruggedness. In many ways, it's Julia Child's Garland range with minor upgrades to bring it up-to-date with modern standards. We love ours. Wouldn't want to trade it for anything else. But it does take a little more effort to set it up initially (pay a good installer to do that for you), and the strict focus on form-follows-function is something that not everybody wants.

As for wall ovens, I can't say enough good things about the Miele CSO. It's a game changer. The speed oven, is less of a unique appliance. We bought it, because we like that it uses space efficiently, by having an oven and a microwave in the same unit. And I still stand by that decision. It also turns out to be both a good convection oven and a good microwave in its own right; but the speed function is not particularly important to us -- and we knew that from the beginning.

@M could you say a little more about "strict focus on form-follows-function" of the Bluestar? And re: Wolf, do you mean don't get a dual fuel re: the electric oven? So, just get a Wolf range top? I'm considering both so would love any insight.

@stephclarke311 We were told about the Theramador package, too. Though our sales person told us that while the Thermador range top puts out great heat for quick boiling, it is very hard to get a simmer because there is just too much heat. Not sure if others have had this experience with Thermadors, but hearing that made me hesitant to purchase one.

Wolf is one of several manufacturers that have not yet solved the decades long problem with the enamel coating in their ovens failing over time. Anecdotally, the information in the Houzz forum suggests that this is primarily a problem with electric ovens. So, I would stay clear of electric ovens that have this type of coating, unless you like eating shards of glass.

Gas ovens appear to be fine from what data I have seen people report on Houzz. And Miele's CSO and speed ovens (but not their regular ovens) are also OK, as their oven liners are made from stainless steel.

So, getting a Wolf or BlueStar gas range or range top is good. Getting the Miele specialty ovens is good. But getting any electric convection oven is potentially problematic.

Wolf is a very mainstream brand. They also own SubZero, and their refrigerators are unrivaled. Customer service is generally considered to be very good. And their gas ranges are "fine". But I am not super impressed by their burner design which does leave some cold spots, changes flame pattern with power output (i.e. flares outward), and is harder to keep clean than Bluestar's open burner design. That's not to say that Wolf doesn't make good ranges. I just don't feel they are as good as can be. And as an opinionated hobby cook who takes this hobby very seriously, I would feel let down.

On the other hand, Bluestar is a very no-frills design. It's designed like a tank. The open burners are super easy to keep clean, once you build up some protective seasoning on the cast iron. The power output is super even and predictable. Cooking in a wok is pure joy with the built-in wok ring. It regulates very evenly to lower levels -- assuming the installer did their job right. And if things go wrong, all you need is basic household tools to service it. Anybody can do that without needing to buy specialty parts. It's all industry-standard components.

The oven is extremely spacious. It holds full-size cookie sheets, or two half-sheets side-by-side. I don't need this very often, but when I do it's very convenient. The downside is that the huge oven cavity takes forever to preheat (at least 20min, better 40min). That's why I love pairing with my small Miele ovens. They preheat within a few minutes and 90% of the time, the smaller capacity of the 24" models is exactly right, even when cooking large and elaborate meals.

Once pre-heated, though, the Bluestar oven is extremely even and predictable. I love cooking and baking with it. It is very boring, and that's a good thing in an appliance. Also, Bluestar ovens have amazing broiler elements. This is the closest you can come to a commercial salamander in a home setting. We use it almost daily. Great for making toast, searing vegetables or meat, ... Even my 9 year old loves using it.

The downside with Bluestar is the fact that it is a much smaller company. While any technician that has seen a commercial range should be able to service it, that might very well be what you have to do. Their service network is smaller and outside of major markets it really depends on how good your local providers are. Their customer service has been mixed over the years. Personally, I have always had great luck. We completely reconfigured our range when we remodelled and bought a bunch of replacement parts (higher feet, different back guard, color change, ...). Customer service was extremely reasonable in accommodating our requests. But others here on Houzz haven't always had the same luck. So, just keep that in mind; you might sometimes have to be the squeaky wheel.

If you have questions about the Miele oven(s), let me know. I love the combination that we have, but I realize this isn't cheap and not everybody is as passionate about their hobby.

I have an all-gas range and an electric wall oven. Since you're doing range+wall oven, skip the dual fuel and have it all!

I am definitely considering this!!

I’ve definitely experienced the Thermador simmer issue. Much prefer my Monogram.

Bakeries don't use gas ovens. They use sealed electric ovens with steam assist. At home you can add a pan of water to your electric oven for the steam affect. Proof Bread YouTube channel provides a wealth of knowledge about baking breads, croissants, English muffins, etc. In this episode he uses a Dutch oven in his home electric range oven to show all the steps used in making artisan sourdough bread.

In the next video at the bakery, he mentions his preference for a pan of water for at home baking at 57:50. The commercial oven they use is an ABS deck oven. About $20k. Oven on left.

For home he mentions a Rofco electric brick oven. Available with steam trays starting at $1750. Info on using one. Link.

I'd also go with an induction range or cooktop and oven. If you want to spend for built-in, a Miele XXL CSO can work for baking and everything else. No gas. Rofco is stand-alone.

I regularly make sourdough bread, yeasted sheet cakes, and occasional croissants. The CSO is a great tool to have access to. But honestly, I often use the gas range instead and the results are equally good.

If you know what you're doing, fuel source is really not important.

I think we are now actually leaning towards a gas range and the electric wall oven. I think my first pick is a professional Blue Star. not sure about the wall oven yet…

Don't even look at the Miele CSO unless you can afford it. It'll get you hooked, and you won't be able to help yourself :-)

We have the plumbed XL model. Love it. It does so many things that I never expected to do with an oven.

My husband loves the Miele brand. I need to research the different wall ovens to see if there is a difference in functionality/ performance. we are considering a blue star, wolf, or miele. And maybe a thermador…

@M The CSO seems a little overwhelming! Was it easy to learn how to use the steam function? What are some of the things that it does that you never expected an oven to do?

The Miele CSO is noticeably smaller than "normal" American ovens. But I find that actually works really well. It preheats so super quickly. And since I do have access to a large oven in my range, I never find the smaller capacity to be a limitation. In fact, steam helps with distributing heat very evenly and you can pack things very tightly in the oven.

The CSO has both very precise control over temperature and over humidity. This means, I can use it for sous-vide cooking. I can use it to proof yeast dough (it does a wonderful job with that!). It can boil eggs very precisely. If you have a particular firmness that you want, you can perfectly reproduce it every single time.

And it works amazingly well for blanching vegetables. Steam cooking asparagus is a game changer. Yes, of course, I can blanch it in a pot of boiling water. But with my CSO it's completely hands-off; so, I can focus on other tasks at the same time. And I can set it to be perfectly cooked while still nicely crisp. Softening cabbage for cabbage rolls is always a big mess when using a pot of water, but it becomes much more manageable in my CSO.

And if I cook for a large group of people, the CSO is the best way to make insane amounts of boiled potatoes or rice. I have cooked a multi-course meal for more than 100 people (before the pandemic), and the CSO made that so much easier to manage.

Oh, and it makes the world's best Kaiserschmarrn! The kids love how I can make the most fluffy and delicious Austrian pancakes.

Heck, it even makes for a great impromptu warming drawer.

Steam is just another parameter that you can control. You don't have to use it every time, but it's great when it's always right at your fingertips. Doesn't take long to figure out what it does, but it helps if you spend a little time reading up and understanding the concept. Steam holds a lot more heat energy than dry air. So, it can work really well for heating things evenly. You can use it at low temperatures (where you'll see condensation) or at high temperatures. Doing so means that your food will be done much faster. You'll be very confused with your time management the first few times, when you discover that meat cooks so much faster. But if you want to crisp things up, you probably want to switch to dryer heat.

For baking, you initially keep humidity high, to allow the starches to gelatinize. This gives bread dough the ability to rise dramatically (aka "oven spring"). Later, you set the crumb in place by forming a crisp crust. That requires drying out the outside of the bread.

There are a small number of downsides with the CSO that I should mention though:

• the stainless steel cavity is by and large pretty easy to clean; but it is very difficult to keep it looking "factory new". Some amounts of permanent staining does happen. As a consequence, I avoid cooking super "splattery" foods in the CSO. If I want to roast a chicken, more often than not, I just use the oven in the gas range. The CSO does in fact do a great job with cooking chicken (and it is really fast, too!), but I am lazy and don't want to worry about scrubbing things afterwards. In the Bluestar oven, the walls are dark and I don't care about splatter :-) Yes, this feels very much like a first-world-problem.
• the CSO tops out at 435°F. This is lower than my speed oven and my gas oven. I don't often have recipes that require higher temperatures, but I do occasionally have some. Those are the days when I am happy that I have multiple different ovens.
• the broiler in the CSO isn't actually all that bad, but the one in the Bluestar is just out of this world. So, I always use the one in the Bluestar when broiling is an important part of the recipe.
• I am so happy that I decided on the plumbed version of the CSO. It was more effort to install it initially, and I had to have a few discussions with the plumber about just how to install the drain. But I really appreciate that I have humidity control at my finger tips. For the non-plumbed CSO, there only is a minor extra task to refill the water canister; but despite being so little work, I feel it would be a psychological barrier and prevent us from using steam ever single time that it makes sense to do so. So, keep that in the back of your mind when deciding between plumbed or not.
• the user interface for the Miele CSO has weird corner cases that can be frustrating when you first learn how to use it. After a few weeks, you'll figure it out and don't even think about it any more.
• about once or twice a year, the CSO has to be descaled. It's a super easy task to do, but you need to make sure you have the supplies on hand. Miele gives you enough for one cycle. Just be prepared and buy a larger supply from Amazon so you'll never be caught by surprise.

@M Wow. This is all incredibly helpful to learn about! I cook A LOT and I've never thought about all of these ways to integrate steam! Definitely something to consider.

Of course, now that I'm leaning towards a BlueStar, I've seen lots of negative posts about door hinge issues, and service issues. Have you had any concerns with your BlueStar? Does it simmer well? We are leaning towards the Platinum. And our local appliance store has a team of repair folks that are trained to service all the brands they sell, so access to a repair person familiar with the brand isn't an issue.

I personally think you get a better deal with the RNB. The Platinum has a "weird" oven heating element. It supposedly addresses the problem with taking a long time to preheat. But it comes at the cost of having more hot air focused in a few spots close to the back of the oven. Personally, I'd rather deal with the longer preheat in exchange for a perfectly evenly heated oven. It really just requires you to plan ahead. And on days when I didn't do that, the CSO is up to temp within 5 to 10 minutes. So, I always have options.

I understand the market pressures that made Bluestar come up with the PowR oven. But I just wished they had a more flexible built-to-order system that allowed you to opt out of this feature.

The extra BTU for the improved burners on the Platinum can be nice though. It certainly makes a difference when cooking in a wok. The RNB is already infinitely better than most competing models, but you can never have too much power when stir frying and searing.

Fortunately, it is relatively easy to replace one of the RNB burners for a Platinum burner after the fact. Bluestar will throw a hissy fit, if you ask them to do this, as they desperately try to differentiate their product lines. But with a little effort, you can find the required parts online and switch them out yourself. It's really easy to do and should cost about $200. Maybe, if you ask really politely, your dealer will even do this for you (they are not supposed to, but some dealers just go the extra mile for their customers).

We felt, we really only needed this for one of the burners. High power is needed in relatively few and short periods during cooking, and the difference between 22kBTU and 25kBTU is only just over 10%. So, it doesn't make much of difference, but sometimes, every little bit helps.

I find that the Bluestar burners regulate to low temperatures much better than pretty much any other gas range (only some, but far from all, induction ranges do this even better). This of course requires the installer to have adjusted the shutters and the low set point correctly. And that depends a little on the gas mix that you get from the city and on the altitude that you are operating at. So, make sure your installer checks this. If they don't, it is something you can do yourself. Bluestar has YouTube videos showing you how to. But you really shouldn't need to; this is a job for the installer. I believe the vast majority of complaints about Bluestar ranges are a direct result of the installer failing to do a proper job with the checklist. Either because they didn't calibrate everything correctly, or because there was damage in transport that nobody wanted to take responsibility for.

We felt that even the 22kBTU burner simmers pretty well, and the 15kBTU burners that we have in the back work wonderfully for simmering. So, we ended up removing the dedicated simmer burner and replaced it with another 15kBTU. Having an extra 15kBTU was more important to us. This works great 90% of the time, unless you really need very low temperatures for an extended amount of time. And in those cases, I find that simmering on the cooktop is actually the wrong technique. Do what restaurants do; move the pot into the oven. Ovens do a much better job at providing very even and precisely controlled amounts of heat. This is one of the reasons why I feel you can never have too many ovens. We really like having the gas range, the CSO and the speed oven; and in extreme cases, I have had to co-opt the gas BBQ on the patio as another oven. Four ovens are such a luxury to have when managing a complex multi-course menu.

Knowing how and when to use ovens has improved my game so much. It took a bit of a learning curve, but it was well worth the effort.

The oven door hinges were a genuine problem with earlier models. Our range was bought at a time, when this was an issue. It is now over 10 years old. We reached out to Bluestar when the door started seizing up after several (8?) years. It was well outside of the regular warranty period by that point. They offered to sell us a current model door at a heavy discount, and they even gave us the option to change the color -- that conveniently coincided with our kitchen remodel. We picked a black door to match the stainless&black look of the Miele ovens. The old door just lifts out and the new one drops in. Very happy with how this worked out. Presumably, in the new model, this particular problem has now been fixed.

I found Bluestar's customer service fine to work with. They are not outstanding, but they are also not bad. But it sometimes does require a few follow-up calls. We have had to call them a few times over the years, as I had made changes to the range for the remodel, and as we bought a floor model as a gift for a friend's cabin; and that floor model turned out to have a bunch of missing and broken parts.

Wow- you have been so helpful!! I appreciate how many people feel strongly enough about their experiences with appliances that they are willing to share with those of us looking for answers. I really appreciate the time you have taken to answer my questions and share what has worked for you. This context around the door hinges is helpful. I have to remember to check the dates on comments or threads because some are quite outdated. It is so helpful to hear from people who are currently using the products. Thanks again!